Taiwan Plane Crash Part 5: Engines had no power

BY CHARL BOSCH - FEBRUARY 6, 2015

Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council had confirmed that the TransAsia turboprop that crashed minutes after take-off in Wednesday had no power going to its two engines.

Speaking at a news briefing in the capital Taipei on Friday, council managing director, Thomas Wang, said that information recovered from the 10-month old ATR 72-600’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders, shows that the first engine began to develop problems 37 seconds after taking from Sung Shan airport on-route to the island of Kinmen.

“The plane flashed a flame-out signal for one of the two engines when the plane climbed to an altitude of 1,200 feet, triggering a warning," the BBC quoted Wang as saying.

“Then the other [left] engine was shut down manually. The pilot tried to restart the engines but to no avail. That means that during the flight's final moments, neither engine had any thrust.”

Local media reports that 35 out of the 58 passengers on-board Flight GE235 have been killed after the plane cartwheeled over a freeway, clipped a taxi and then a bridge barrier, before plunging into the Keelung River, less than a minute after the problems started.